Needles in haystacks

Image via WikipediaSadly someone is running the Ungrouply blog with the intent of defaming Grouply. I would support this activity much more positively if and when new or useful points are made. Sadly one has to read lots of repetitive and often incorrect waffle to get to any pertinent and useful points. Take this thread on the subject of friends.

Now let me say, that I for one do not generally like the Internet redefinition of friends, and I struggle even with Grouply's. However a contributor going under the pseudo-name of netbud seems to be trying to take Grouply to task on the subject and so uses the Ungrouply blog as a vehicle for expanding on this.

Amidst the lengthy treatise there is at least one useful point, that Grouply could provide a "delete friend" button, and netbud states that this idea has been taken on by Grouply. However rather than accepting that a good idea has been taken on board netbud seems to go on and imply that it hasn't. I will let you dear reader decide whether to wade through the rest of the lengthy post.

For me, I would like to say thank you to Netbud, it is only by suggesting improvements in a product or service that it will ever be improved, and this suggestion gets my vote.

Passing the 300,000 groups barrier

According to TechCrunch, over 300,000 groups are being accessed via Grouply. How this relates to Ning, I am not sure but whatever the pros and cons this is an impressive statistic.

Two up and one down, keep moving

Two new Yahoo Groups have been formed. The Grouply-Users-Group is for active users of Grouply to explore the product. To belong to this group one has to be a registered user of Grouply. Postings on this group are closed.

The other group, GrouplyFriendlyGroups is there to list groups that welcome Grouply users. This is a backlash probably to counteract the some of the negative assertions of past few weeks where some groups have elected to block Grouply use using the owner controls.

I tried to do my own survey of groups that have blocked Grouply and it seems that for some reasons people who into knitting, embroidery and such are more likely to have blocked Grouply. Why people who knit and sew might take this approach is beyond me, but it is a free world.

And the Old one? Well the major proponent arguing against Grouply was someone called Ungrouply running a group by the same name. Neither seems to exist anymore. All very interesting.

What has happened?

Can someone tell me what has happened to the Ungrouply group?

There is only ONE way to make a computer system secure

I really mean it. The only way to ensure a computer system, whether hardware or software or a mixture of the two - is to ask your most ardent critics are hard trying to crack your system. Anyone who is supportive of you will most likely tell you the story you want to hear. On the other hand your critics tell you the stories you do not want to hear.

This is what happened some years ago to Microsoft who claimed their websites were secure, and then they were immediately hacked. Such hacking of one of the Internet's highest profile websites does not seem to occur anymore.

Speaking from personal experience of running 24/7 high-powered and hand-built Internet servers running from USA, UK, France and more, I had various people "challenge" these systems . I found this process so useful I also ran competitions to hack the system and discover & publish key information. Although I believe my systems were never compromised I never had the advantage of a public group of ardent critics.

Enter ungrouply. This Yahoo group is proving the most ardent critic of Grouply and is trying hard to find and document any weaknesses. Right now a new user is trying different Yahoo profiles against Grouply and seeing what happens. No errors on that account seem to be noted, thus far. But you never know.

Please ungrouply go to it. You are doing stirling work. Much of what your opinion I may disagree with as off-the-wall hyperbole. On the other hand inside your group there are some important points. Please do your best to explore and document these.

The result of a Grouply that has been security tested by its biggest critic will ensure Grouply is truly a solid product & service.

You would think someone interested in photography would have good eyesight!

If you look at the home page of Canon-100 Yahoo Group you will see an assertion of "the risk of identity theft it can facilitate". Now I consider myself reasonably well versed in understanding what identity theft is, but hey let's get the verdict of a real authority. Let's go to ftc.gov and see what they have to say.

Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personally identifying information, like your name, Social Security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes.

Three words hit me from that sentence: permission, fraud and crime.

So let us understand what Grouply does and measure it up against the assertion on the Canon-100 Y!G.

Grouply requests that users register their Yahoo ID and password. In this way they are gaining permission. At least that is what I understand by "permission".

Grouply are not alone in requesting this kind of information. Household names that do similar include Trillian, Qnext and Meebo. If you look further getting to around 20 tools and websites that do similar is very easy, and I would not be at all surprised if the diligent researcher could get to a 100 tools and services, or more.

Now on the Yahoo Groups blog this issue was explicitly raised, and what Yahoo said was that if you were going to reveal your Yahoo ID and password to anyone then you jolly well ought to be careful. More than that they said that you are responsible for such an action - that's what their Terms of Service says.

Note that what they did NOT say is that you should not reveal your Yahoo ID and password. To say that would have been very easy for them to do. Nice, clean, job done. But they did not. No, what they said was - act responsibly.

Now I would like to briefly investigate two questions that are opposite sides of the same coin. Why hasn't anyone complained about the many other tools and services that are around and that also request a Yahoo ID and password, or more rather why do Yahoo Group owners get overly concerned.

Well to start with many of the tools and services such as Trillian and primarily aimed at chatting and instant messaging. Chatting has two characteristics that are different to Yahoo Groups, it is temporal and also (with no disrespect) can often be relatively "light" hearted. Conversations in Yahoo Groups can often get quite heated. Sometimes debate becomes very intensive and very personal. It can also be very informed debate. It can also be quite ground-breaking. Basically people who frequent Yahoo Groups often put their life and soul on the line.

Not only that, but the content of a Yahoo Group can also be very personal not just from an intellectual sense but also from a physical sense. I belong and contribute to several groups concerning medical conditions. I, personally, would not want the content of those groups revealed to people outside those groups. And I am not talking acne!

What goes in a group, stays in a group. Okay? That is what it is important to group owners and members alike. That's privacy, and that what Grouply does. Grouply exposes messages to users who are in already in a group. It does not expose those messages to people who are not members of a group, even if the group's archives are public.

(There are a couple of important refinements to this in progress for groups where the moderator restricts archive access to moderators only and groups with deleted posts. See GrouplyImprovements below for more info.)

Of course the problem of the all-encompassing Yahoo ID & password is that it potentially gives access to all of one's yahoo system. That includes email, instant messaging, groups, profile and whatever other products and services that Yahoo delivers. That's why you have to act responsibly.

This means that those people who just use Yahoo for its Groups activity may take a different perspective to ones who use Yahoo for a wide range of their products and services. And this is just one reason why Yahoo does not say "thou shalt not". They know that everyone is different.

They know that someone who is simply going to IM around friends on GoogleTalk, AIM and Yahoo Messenger is going to use a single easy to use, no install, no clutter, no ads interface service like Meebo or Trillian every chance they can get.

I know of high-powered computer system administrators use tools like Meebo to stay in touch with their customers. They know that their customers will use their own favourite tool and rather than being proscriptive, "hey, if you want to talk to use you have to us when your servers are down then you MUST use GoogleTalk" they prefer to say, "just use whatever way you have of communicating, we accept all kinds of IM technologies..." That's where IM aggregation tools step in.

Let me underline a point here. It would be extremely easy for any and all of these tools and services that are similar to Grouply to surrepticiously garner all of your Yahoo Groups information, profiles, groups and their archives. Once they have your Yahoo ID and password nothing you could do could stop them, except for changing your credentials. But they don't, at least in general. Most if not all of them act totally responsibly. To do otherwise would be quickly spotted by some Internet guru, perhaps using tools such as TcpView from SysInternals that monitor TCP and UDP endpoints.

Now Grouply is an aggregation tool, one currently focused on Yahoo Groups, and potentially soon to include Google Groups. So focusing on Yahoo, they know that new products and services will come on stream all the time and that flexibility is a fundamental requirement if any one company is going to survive. They also know that people write passwords down on pieces of paper, that they share them will family and friends - and colleagues. They also know that people send passwords in (insecure) emails.

They, Yahoo, know like the rest of us should know that passwords are a very poor security system. They and you know that passwords are well understood and very flexible. Just act responsibly. Responsibly means things like changing your password occasionally, using strong passwords and maintaining its privacy.

And so Grouply enters the fray. A new service that delivers significantly beneficial functionality for some types of Yahoo Groups users. Yes, there will always be some people who do not wish to use Grouply because it offers them nothing.

Yet there are others who have their eyes open to new ideas, new ways of working. Such people are interested in working more effectively, whether that is faster or more informed or whatever. This is the information age, after all.

So we now kn0w that Grouply users, because of the information they are dealing with is primarily on Yahoo Groups that they are often sensitive as to how that data is managed. Therefore it is right that Grouply should act responsibly. I will go further than that they should act very responsibly. So what do we mean by responsibly?

1. A properly formed company
2. A comprehensive statement on privacy
3. One that is backed by independent auditing authority
4. And a company that is very responsive to user needs on privacy

Have I missed anything? What I have listed above sums up what Grouply is. Their statement on privacy is very comprehensive. To my knowledge there has not been one complaint against that statement, and if there has then Grouply has been very responsive to work with the person / people to ensure that those privacy needs are met.

To give an example of how responsive they are the Yahoo Group called GrouplyImprovements was formed by people who are considered by many in-the-know as perhaps doyens of this industry. When they speak, people listen. The group runs independently and the Grouply team are "in there" as members, as contributors. They listen to what is going on, they answer questions and they interpret ideas, take them away and implement them in an orderly fashion back into the Grouply product and service.

And so we come back to identity theft. How someone can insinuate that Grouply is stealing Yahoo IDs and passwords is beyond my ken. Grouply state, up front what they are going to ask for. They have a well defined process for safeguarding that information, the essential points of which is covered in their privacy statement. They say why information is required, and how it will be used. Further than that they say how it will NOT be used.

And how does it measure up against the FTC's powerful words "fraud" and "crime"? I think you will agree that if someone was going to commit such acts they would at least avoid having a decent privacy statement. I think you would probably find that a company interested in such acts would try to hide behind a veil of secrecy: instead Mark & Rich the company's founders are not difficult to find or talk to.

I would like anyone to show me another company that requests Yahoo IDs and passwords that acts more responsibly - and you can take that as a challenge.

Ungrouply sues Yahoo, and Google

A great addition to the debate is a new group called Ungrouply. This is a group of people who want three things. Primarily they want to act as a forum for people who wish to understand the issues around Grouply's service from a critical perspective. Secondly they don't want postings or scrapings from people such as myself, that is people advocating Grouply service. Finally they only want the truth. Given that membership is open to all, and that the debate will be controlled to be one-sided then I fear the truth will be difficult to stick to. All I can say is I wish them luck.

What I really want to talk about is what their position is on copyright. On their home page they state:

"Membership here is open to all without moderator approval. Our message archive is set for public viewing. You can share links to messages here. New members are moderated. All content of postings here are COPYRIGHTED by their authors. If you quote a posting found here, you must provide attribution to the source by including a link to the original message here. Copyright violators, spammers, abusers, etc. will be subject to prosecution."

So you see the contradiction? Public viewing...copyright...prosecution.

They are opening themselves up to BIG problems here. Firstly any group whose archives are PUBLIC will be swallowed whole by search engines like Google. Any public yahoo group has a built-in RSS feed and will be syndicated round the web faster than you can boil a kettle of water.

So right off they have to sue Google, Yahoo and all the other search engine companies. Not only that they have to start addressing all the syndication websites and tools, any one of which could display their posts in part or whole. None of these will care two hoots for any statements on the home page about copyright.

It potentially gets even worse for the group owners. Suppose a member posts something which ends up being "scraped" (their word) onto another website. The question is who does the suing? Is it the group owner or the copyright owner?

It gets worse for the group owners since I would argue the group owners are now liable for any copyright infringement incurred by any member. So if the group owner does not protect such copyright then they themselves are fully culpable, especially since they state so clearly on the home page their legal position on copyright. When I say culpable I am saying that each and every poster could sue them for aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. No member or owner of Ungrouply is going to be silly enough to sue Google, are they?

But of course what they are saying is that they are happy to sue Grouply. And that's the truth.
Now just suppose someone posts, and that copyright is violated then are the group owners and moderators saying that they will themselves incur the legal costs? Or are they saying that they are imposing obligations on each member to incur those costs?

Supposing someone's copyright was broken, then Perhaps an errant member could now sue the owners for not suing someone else

Chicken and sausages

On Yahoo Answers someone called Rowen raised pertinent questions around Grouply. Unfortunately this Rowen seems to have been simply repeating verbatim something that he or she considers a "reliable source".

Now there is an extremely healthy debate around Grouply, but Rowen's reliable source has sent him or her barking mad up the wrong tree in so many ways that this seems more intent on spreading rumour than dealing with verifiable facts.

The first problem is that they talk about Grouply as if it was a Yahoo Group. Now in fact there is a group, on Y!G's called Grouply. I know because I am a member. The group is largely dormant and only has a handful of members, but that is not the point. The point is that the current debate is around Grouply the service. This is something so totally different: chalk and cheese.

The second problem is that somehow giving a reputable company your Yahoo ID and password implies they can and do mass mailings. Excuse me but people, including spammers don't need a Yahoo ID and password to do mass mailings. There are a range of tools that you can get for free to do mass mailings. And certainly if you are going to spam you jolly well keep your head below the parapet when doing it.

It's just like someone saying a chicken lays eggs so let's have 5 sausages to eat.

I could steer a whole barrage of battleships through the question, but in the interests of brevity I will conclude with saying that the questioner has chosen an answer that says the solution is to use some spyware. Don't get me wrong, I am a great advocate of spyware and consider it of better value in the security game than anti-virus tools. But that is not the point.

The point is that it is another example of chicken and sausages.
Now what I like best about the questioner is that they have chosen an anwer
Well Rowen, you have just proved how disreputable your source is and if that is the quality of information on which you depend - they I would recommend you change your friends, instantly.

You see Rowen, a "group" (in the Yahoo sense) mostly contains messages. Some groups may not discuss nice things. But that is the limit of the damage they can do. You see Rowen, you are implying that using Yahoo Groups is somehow dangerous, and I am not sure that Yahoo would like that implication.

Now in case you think that I am taking a dig at Rowen, think again. We can all do better and we all need to improve ourselves. But please Rowen, do some real homework. If you really are quoting your source then do yourself a favour and find someone else since, I am sad to say, this one is not on planet earth. I recommend some of the people on GrouplyComplaints. Some of the posters there can make cogent arguments.

Loud and clear

I remember reading one post on EL-M concerning Grouply which I would like to pick up on right now. The question was asked, why hadn't Grouply somehow fixed all these security issues right at the beginning. In response I quipped, or wanted to quip, that perhaps the reason was that it would take a massive budget to fix ever bug in advance, and one that is not easily available to a startup company.

However there is a deeper reason. Firstly let us look at the marketplace of services similar to Yahoo groups. Well, there is Google Groups which after some years is a close parallel. Is there anything else that's close?

And what is so unique that makes Yahoo Groups continue to grow apace? It is its flexibility (in terms of being usable from email and from a website) and its almost unique security & moderation controls.

And so Grouply enters the fray. Initially it has focused its development on getting the thing working. By that I means that it has provided an alternative platform that is something between email and the Yahoo Groups website. On top of that it adds a so-called Web 2.0 interface.

Where Grouply was a week or two ago was a running service from a user perspective. Rightly or wrongly they had hardly any features aimed at moderators. And so we come to the question.

Who knows what moderators want? Who knows what moderators need? The only possible answer to that is moderators. Right now moderators are pumping ideas into Grouply that they want and need.

Could Grouply have pre-empted these thoughts? Well I consider myself a guru in my own little way on owning and moderating my own groups. But if there is one thing I have learnt over the last few days is that other people have very different ideas.

Am I deluded in my own knowledge? I think not. One key to Yahoo Groups is the very flexible security model. That flexibility has resulted in vastly different ways in which groups are controlled, from very hands-off to very hands-on. From groups that have public archives and anyone, even non-group members can post, through "sensibly" controlled groups where membership requires approval and posts are moderated to groups where only the owner posts.

The moderator community is saying that it will dictate its terms on the security to be implemented and Grouply is then negotiating around that agenda. Could that have been done up-front? Good question.

For me the answer is that no matter how many security features Grouply might have implemented before now, right now whatever they had done would have been off-beam. Yes they might have got some things right, but still they would have got a lot wrong, and my guess is the same kind of flak would have been thrown, just different words.

Fortunately for everyone, the moderator community is speaking loud and clear - and Grouply are working with that.

Help fight spam

There are a lot of people who have complained about Grouply causing spam. Take this posting on gather.com as just one example.

Now its not that I don't believe people, but as far as I know Grouply should actually inhibit spam. Also across all my groups I have not seen one shred of evidence. Perhaps I am lucky! Anyway I conclude from that is that it must be one or more members of particular groups that are using Grouply to spam.

Now, I am sure that some of the developments in Grouply that are being worked on as we speak will block some potential loopholes, and already I know of one that was addressed where a member could send messages to a group with a stock message.

However if there is some further way that Grouply is being abused by spammers then it really is important for everyone to help eradicate that. If someone sends me a copy of a spam to my email, it would be much appreciated. This may just help Grouply to find any loophole used by a spammer - and block it.

Fixes are rolling out

The Grouply Improvements group is having an effect. The first fix that came out was an unsubbing tool that does not require manual intervention, which is available from the settings page.

Grouply are working on other issues as they are clarified by the group. The moderators of the group are also working hard to keep issues separated, but naturally there is overlap and confusion - and perhaps differences of opinion in some instances. One such are is regarding opt-0ut and opt-in. My guess is that such things will be implemented and the first implementation will work for some people but others will need to explain why it does not work for them and their privacy needs.

Rather than looking at the differences, what seems impressive to me is the consort of opinion that seems to be in the group at the moment. If Grouply are able to implement these to the satisfaction of the majority, then the my guess is service should be able to lose its beta epithet.

But there is a way to go yet.

Yahoo Groups on Grouply

There are three Yahoo Groups on the subject of Grouply.

• Grouply-faq which provides general tips and tricks etc,
• Grouply_and_freecycling which is aimed at understanding features aimed at the freecycle community.
• GrouplyImprovements which is aimed at moderators wanting to influence Grouply and
  

All are currently open to anyone to join. The first two are run by myself whereas the last is run by various people who have deep interest in security. These are all independent groups in that they are not run by Grouply.

Yahoo TOS and Grouply

Paragraph 5 of Yahoo's terms of service covers the care that you should take with your Yahoo userid and password. If I may quote that paragraph,

"You will receive a password and account designation upon completing the Service's registration process. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the password and account and are fully responsible for all activities that occur under your password or account. You agree to (a) immediately notify Yahoo! of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security, and (b) ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session. Yahoo! cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with this Section 5."

What I take from this is that Yahoo explicitly does not say that you can expose your password or id to anyone. What it implies is that if you do then you must act responsibly.

So for example, if you write your password down on a piece of paper and stick it next to your computer you must decide if that is acting responsibly. If you tell a partner, relation or friend your password then you must decide if that is a responsible thing to do.

Similarly if you enter your password into a secured and encrypted system such as Grouply then you must personally decide if that is a responsible thing to do. The emphasis is on what you personally decide.

Also did Grouply ask your for authorisation for your password? Is that in their terms and conditions?

So you must decide if Grouply is a bona-fide company. You can do this by checking its legal status. You can also check its investors out. You can also ask whether Grouply stores the password securely. Also does Grouply keep you in full control of your password at all times, including the possibility to delete or change it. Finally is Grouply's approach to privacy backed by any independently verifiable process.

If the answer to all of these is positive then is there anything more that you could do? If the answer is that you have covered all bases, then surely you have acted responsibly. On this conclusion would I argue that using Grouply is a safe thing to do.

Is Grouply a case of Identity Theft?

Someone has kindly asked the question on Yahoo Answers as to whether Grouply is a case of Identity theft. This is a silly question since the basic premise of Grouply is that they properly gain your permission up front in an honest way, whereas Identity theft is most often done in the background. Not only that but with identity theft your details so captured are used for private purposes that you have not authorised. There has not been a single instance of anyone insinuating this.

Above and beyond this Grouply have for some time provided the independent services of TrustE to provide assurance to anyone who is concerned about privacy. They will investigate on your behalf. To date they have not reported any substantiated complaints in any way.

I can give guarantee you that should TrustE report some serious misdeed you will hear it here as soon as possible.

How smelly is fish?

One blogger worthy of checking out is Tania's blog. Unfortunately she reduces the value of some her powerful arguments at least with exaggeration, and sadly with poor research. For example, she claims to speak for "virtually all" owners and moderators. That is such a large claim that, given the absolutely huge number of groups, owners and moderators that there are owes more to the strength of her emotion than the strength of her arguments.

Let us examine one of those arguments. She has made one posting grouply = phishing, which is a very commendable question to ask. So let us understand what phishing is. To me (and wikipedia) phishing is making a website or email look like something it is not in order to glean personal information. Typically this is done by taking a copy of a web page, such as a registration page but whatever data is entered by the user goes to some unknown person or company that then uses your data for nefarious purposes.

Well, certainly there is a charge that Grouply might be in a position to use personal data for incorrect purposes. That is a valid question. If Tania limited herself to that great.

But phishing? In what senses could Grouply be considered phishing? Well all the times I have used Grouply it has been at the Grouply website. I have never heard of one instance when someone has said they have been taken to some weird website, so in that sense it is not phishing.

Another aspect of phishing is when some gets your data by false pretences. Everything that Grouply does is up front. It is fully documented on their public help system and only takes a couple of minutes to read.

The only sense in which it could be argued that it is phishing is if they used any data so collected for nefarious purposes. If anyone has any valid claims on this then I suggest they report to TrustE, with whom grouply is registered in order to give reassurance in the context of privacy of data so that what they say they do, and only that.

Phishing? Please form your own judgement. You may or may not like any website service. That is your choice, but please let us stick to facts.

I could go on and comment on her assertion that Yahoo Group users can gain access to posts in groups they do not even belong to, but that is so ridiculous I find myself concerned about her resentment about the additional work she claims she has undertaken.

Next time, Tania please do some half-decent research first and you might save yourself some of that obvious resentment, never mind save some hours of your own effort and also the concern you raise in your group's membership.

Finally, I am not saying that the entirety of what Tania is saying is rubbish. Just that this is a misfired deluge that comes from the heart out of concern for the safety and privacy of her groups and members. Let's get that right and stop talking about this phishing nonsense.

Yahoo Answers

Actually if you are after an answer from Yahoo itself then my guess is you need to wait. There are various challenges (ones that we will come to) concerning Grouply and at Yahoo Answers there have been, and my guess is they may continue, a range of questions on Grouply.

I will just pick up on one of these for now, Is Grouply either a phishing, a scam or is it legit? Now, as you will see I have in fact posted a response and one that I think answers the question with verifiable facts. Sadly someone woodsnwind has responded with something about Direct Adds.
Now I fully support woodsnwind's right to make his or her point however what they have asserted they have done with no valid research and is completely off-beam concerning reality. To understand this let me just explain what Direct Adds is, as I understand his/her comment and what my understanding of how Yahoo groups operates.

The question is how does someone join a group. Essentially they can either ask to join, or an existing member (typically an owner-moderator) can invite them. One can join a group yourself either by visiting the group's home page and clicking the "join" button, or by sending a "subscribe" email to the group. These approaches are not in question.

You can also join a group (again typically by an owner or moderator) in one of two ways. The first is that you can be invited to join a group. In this instance you get an email from the group explaining something of what the group is about and offering you the change to join it. Again this approach is not in question.

The final one is probably what woodsnwind's comment is aimed at. This is called Direct Add. Now Direct Add is when a group member, owner or moderator actually forces someone into being a member of a group. This process, according to Yahoo TOS should only happen if someone already knows that they are going to be added.

As an example I have one group for my extended family, and another for a range of personal friends. With these two groups I applied a range of Direct Adds. This was valid because I had already discussed this and told people what I was going to do, and importantly got their approval.

Now as far as I know, there is only one place in the world from which you can do this. That is from the Yahoo Groups website at the page http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XXX/subs_add, were XXX is the name of the group.

When I say there is only one place, I mean it. Yes some other website could quite easily add that URL to their website for one or more groups. Critically this functionality has not been built into Grouply. Neither is the functionality anywhere in the product, nor is it documented, nor have I seen any possible development of the same. Further than that I would personally object if such a feature was developed.

So while I agree with woodsnwind's sympathies, this post is completely in error. I personally challenge anyone to any function in Grouply, not only that can do a Direct Add, but also any function in Grouply that can actually add a user to a group, directly or indirectly.

What do I take from this? Sadly when people object to something, perhaps especially on Y!G, many people speak from the heart very vociferously but also sometimes without having done proper research. Sadly some people even object to doing what I would term "due diligence".

My advice? Check out the facts. Come to your own opinion based on your own research. Don't agree with hype just because it has made a good headline.

More about me

Before I start blogging in earnest let me state my position more clearly, since anyone who writes on the web with a hidden agenda is not to be trusted.

Firstly I love Grouply. I was an early beta tester of the service and proudly continue to test and discuss new ideas for development. I own or moderate around ten groups and am a member of around 80 more. I have been involved in forum -styled communities as my main Internet activity since, well let's say the year 2000, though I have run groups going back to eGroups days. In fact I can trace my "online" group activity to before the Internet was operational, let's but a stamp on that of around 1980. From those days I remember the heady excitement of logging on to ArpaNet.

My recent Internet activities are primarily in the freecycling fraternity. You can visit my blog there - The FreeRRRs - if you wish to read more. It is through this that I have come to expand my Yahoo Group activities.

What drives me forward is the total sense of community. If something supports that then I am interested, and not surprisingly that is what Grouply does for me, and that's why I created this blog.

As you read posts I will hopefully point you to both positive and negative references on Grouply. I will provide you with my take on it, and providing you are polite and on topic then I am happy to field comments, especially robustly argued ones.

(You will see in the side bar feeds from various web resources. If you feel there is a deserving feed to add, let me know.)

And so, on with the show...

What is Grouply?

The starting point for anyone who wants to know is that Grouply is a web service for interacting with your Yahoo Groups. More than just an email client, Grouply makes the message archives of any group available to you (and only you) on their servers and in so doing enables you to add social networking features such as bookmarking, tagging and rating on threads that are of interest to you. The entire goal of Grouply is to enable a more productive environment for the normal user of a Yahoo Group.

In providing that set of features Grouply is pretty well robust and complete. Where it is weak is on group moderator features. Right now a very robust debate is taking place on what features are missing, and indeed some might argue volubly whether it is worthwhile to even implement them.

This is an important and seminal discussion that asks the question can Yahoo groups be brought in to the 21st century? In trying to bring web 2.0 features to a very old technology there are some moderators who ask very demanding questions: ones that deserve and need answers. So we have cat and mouse game of vocal moderators demanding new features aimed at them, and Grouply trying to work through those demands in a rational manner.

If one thing can be taken away from this exercise it is that it demonstrates the value of Yahoo Groups to society. Many people, like myself, live a lot of their life inside Yahoo Groups. Some people want to stick with what they have, others wish to explore new ideas. Could this be a key moment in Internet history that is unfolding?

Watch this blog and hopefully we will find out together.

Hi

There is a lot of hype going on around Grouply right now. As an advocate for Grouply I am going to try to see if I can pull together some of threads on this blog and point you to some resources where you can find out more.